Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 3/1962 Nixon's Six Crises is published, charging that Kennedy was briefed on the Cuban exile training before the election, and had deliberately endangered it by his campaign statements. The White House denied this, and was supported by Allen Dulles. Salinger said that JFK "was not told before the election of 1960 of the training of troops outside of Cuba or of any plans for 'supporting an invasion of Cuba.'" The campaign briefings had only been general in nature, and Kennedy had only heard of the invasion plans on 11/18/1960. Dulles said that Nixon had misunderstood: "My briefings...did not cover our own government's plans or programs for action, overt or covert." (NY Herald Tribune 3/21)
  
• 3/1962 On two occasions, McNamara said publicly that military force alone would not prevent a communist takeover in Vietnam. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote Kennedy to look for any opportunity for a political settlement in Vietnam. The JCS fought Galbraith's proposals vigorously, and Kennedy continued to muddle along.
  
• 3/1962 JFK told a press conference that if regular combat units were required in Vietnam, that would be "a basic change...which calls for a constitutional decision, of course I would go to the Congress."
  
• 3/1962 Thomas Merton wrote in a March 1962 letter, " the first and greatest of all commandments is that America shall not and must not be beaten in the Cold War, and the second is like unto this, that if a hot war is necessary to prevent defeat in the Cold War, then a hot war must be fought even if civilization is to be destroyed. "
  
• 3/1962 The Mohole was an early 1960s government project to, purely for scientific purposes, drill to the Moho layer deep under the Earth where crust turns to magma. It shows both genuine scientific enthusiasm being overwhelmed by political cronyism: "In the fall of 1958, which was already a year of scientific wonders, plans were announced in the technical and popular press for what promised to be an amazing undertaking. A group of American geophysicists were going to drill a hole several miles beneath the sea floor all the way to the remote interior of the planetthe vast nucleus of dense, compacted rock known as the mantle... an article in Life by John Steinbeck, who had been an amateur oceanographer as well as a prominent novelist. His perfervid accounts of the first exploratory drillings did much to increase public support for the scheme, which reached its peak in 1962, when Congress voted to back it with an appropriation of more than $40 million. And then, abruptly, there was silence... History is full of examples of technological accomplishments that looked impossible when they were started. The 1940s and 1950s abounded with such triumphs, and by 1958 it was reasonable to think that no problem existed that couldn't be solved if enough smart people put their minds to it. However, most of the great advances of that era were made possible by inventions that had not been around a decade or two before: radar, controlled atomic fission, jet engines, lasers, computers. Mohole, by contrast, would have to make do with incremental improvements in existing technology...The basic equipment devised for the experiment surpassed all expectations, and the expedition returned in triumph to be feted by scientific organizations all over the globe...Preliminary grants and corporate donations had paid for CUSS I, but a ship capable of actually drilling the Mohole would require an entirely different level of funding. Estimates of the cost kept going up, but even in the earliest stages it was clear that it would be at least $15 million. By 1962 the price tag had passed $40 million, and when the project was finally abandoned, in 1966, it was more than $110 million. Government financing would obviously be needed. Many Mohole advocates, mindful of the importance of public support, wanted to go right ahead and drill to the mantle, with no more exploratory missions to eat up funds. Others, including Bascom, privately wondered if the available technology was equal to the task. Bascom suggested that the project proceed in stages, like the lunarlanding program. The ostensible reason was to let participants get used to the novel equipment and perhaps improve it, but in fact Bascom doubted that the Mohole would ever be completed and may have wanted to do as much geological research as possible before the money ran out. In a recent interview Bascom said that the entire Mohole venture was misguided and technically unfeasible and that a better goal would have been to drill many shallow holes in the ocean floor and examine the sediment they yieldedwhich was in fact done several years later...Whatever Bascom's motives at the time, his plea for a phased approach failed, and his own bid for a government contract was rejected (and in characteristically reckless Bascomian fashion, he had mortgaged his home to set up a deep-sea drilling company). Instead, in March of 1962 the NSF signed a preliminary contract with Brown & Root, a giant Texas construction firm. From that point on, none of AMSOC's original Mohole committee Ewing, Hess, Munk, and Bascomplayed any significant role in the project except to complain about how everybody else was screwing it up. Brown & Root had very little experience in the construction of oil platforms and none whatever in the field of floating derricks, but it did meet one very important qualification for government funding: It had bankrolled Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson throughout his political career...By 1964 the project had become so bogged down in internecine disputes that it dropped from public attention. Early in 1965 the NSF announced plans to revive Mohole at a new site off the Hawaiian Islands, but as costs kept rising with nothing to show, the public grew weary of tossing money into the ocean. In January 1966 a House subcommittee recommended cutting off funds for Mohole. That spring LBJ, now President and ever loyal to his friends, urged Congress to restore the money. But then it came out that the family of one of Brown & Root's principals had just given $25,000 to Johnson's campaign fund. The ensuing row damaged the President's credibility, and in August Congress voted against any further appropriation. Mohole was dead...
  
• 3/1/1962 The Special Group Augmented confirms that the immediate objective of the program would be intelligence collection and that all other actions would be inconspicuous and consistent with the U.S. overt policy of isolating Castro and neutralizing Cuban influence in the hemisphere. (Document 6, Guidelines for Operation Mongoose, 3/14/62; Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 145)
  
• 3/3/1962 JFK announces decision to resume atmospheric nuclear testing for several months, but makes it clear this is happening only because the Soviets are doing it first.
  
• 3/4/1962 The Sunday Times (London) reported that the US effort in Vietnam "has already passed the point where aid can be distinguished from involvement."
  
• 3/6/1962 Supreme Court justice Whittaker entered the hospital, and soon after retired.
  
• 3/7/1962 Malcolm X said in a speech, "There is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international struggle."
  
• 3/9/1962 State Dept announces that US pilots are participating in bombing missions against guerrillas in South Vietnam, for training purposes.
  
• 3/9/1962 State Department told US Embassy in Moscow that INS had refused to waive sanctions, and suggested that Marina proceed to a third country where the sanctions issue did not arise, and there she could obtain a US visa.
  
• 3/10/1962 Nicholas Turner of Reuters reported that Americans were piloting air strikes against the Vietcong, flying South Vietnamese Air Force planes.
  
• 3/12/1962 JFK told some Latin American diplomats, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
  
• 3/13/1962 Operation Northwoods was a false-flag conspiracy plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. The plan stated: "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group. (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them. There is no record of McNamara 's response. However, according to the record of a March 16 White House meeting, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer and other key advisers that he could not foresee any circumstances " that would justify and make desirable the use of American forces for overt military action" in Cuba. James Bamford wrote on Northwoods: "Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
  
• 3/13/1962 JFK asked Congress for $4.8 billion for foreign aid for 1963.
  
• 3/14/1962 Guidelines for OPERATION MONGOOSE are approved by the SGA . Drafted by Maxwell Taylor, they note that the United States would attempt to "make maximum use of indigenous resources" in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro but recognize that "final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention." Indigenous resources would act to "prepare and justify this intervention, and thereafter to facilitate and support it." Kennedy is briefed on the guidelines on March 16. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, pp. 145-47, 159)
  
• 3/14/1962 A 17-nation UN disarmament conference opens in Geneva.
  
• 3/15/1962 JFK gave a speech about the need to regulate medicines so their manufacturers must live up to the claims they make for their product: "There is no way of measuring the needless suffering, the money innocently squandered, and the protraction of illnesses resulting from the use of such ineffective drugs."
  
• 3/16/1962 Leavitt, Scott - "The Far-Off War in Vietnam We Have Decided to Win" - Life 3/16/1962
  
• 3/16/1962 It has been shown that President John F. Kennedy personally rejected the Northwoods proposal. A JCS/Pentagon document (Ed Lansdale memo) titled MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT, 16 MARCH 1962 reads: "General Lemnitzer commented that the military had contingency plans for US intervention. Also it had plans to for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretext either attacks on US aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we could retaliate. The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of military force, that General Lemnitzer might find the U.S so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4 divisions in Cuba." The proposal was sent for approval to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, but was not implemented. Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly afterward, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. Lansdale suggests killing Castro while he visits Ernest Hemmingway's Cuban home.
  
• 3/16/1962 US Embassy in Brussels told Embassy in Moscow that if Marina came there she could get a visa in a few days.
  
• 3/19/1962 Communist Party was sued in New York by Justice Dept, including four of the party's officials: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Gus Hall, Benjamin J. Davis and Philip Bart. The suit was filed over income taxes from 1951.
  
• 3/19/1962 official cease fire in Algeria
  
• 3/19/1962 A week-long pro-Castro uprising in Guatemala is crushed after the arrest of 1000 people.
  
• 3/20/1962 Memo from Courtney Evans to Alan Belmont on Judith Campbell's calls to the White House: "the Director may desire to bear this information in connection with his forthcoming appointment with the President...[Informer] advised that he has seen Campbell with John Roselli."
  
• 3/20/1962 Formal press release from the White House denied that Kennedy had been told of any plans for "supporting an invasion of Cuba" before the election. The White House denial was backed up by Dulles, who explained that Nixon's comments were apparently based on a misunderstanding of what was included in the briefings he had given Kennedy.
  
• 3/21/1962 Billy James Hargis called to order a carefully selected group in Washington, D.C. "Dear Fellow Country-Savers," Hargis's invitation had begun. It went on to describe plans for regular briefings "by great conservative statesmen from both political parties on what must be done in the field of education and otherwise to help save our country from internal communism." No press representatives were allowed at the founding session of the Anti-Communist Liaison, which brought together about one hundred delegates representing some seventy-five right-wing groups at the Washington Hotel. Named as its chairman and operating head was Edward Hunter, a National Advisory Board member of Young Americans for Freedom, and the self-professed "brainwashing" expert mentioned earlier. A foreign correspondent since the 1920s for various newspapers, Hunter had taken a two-year "sabbatical" to serve as an OSS "propaganda specialist" in World War II. He remained under contract with the newly established CIA, and worked undercover across Asia as a roving journalist after the war. His September, 1950 article in the Miami News, "Brainwashing Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party" was the first printed use of the term "brainwashing." Gen. Willoughby attended the Washington meetings, of course, and was appointed a member of the Anti-Communist Liaison's five-person Committee of Correspondence. Joining him on the Committee was retired brigadier general Bonner Fellers. Starting out as a military attache in Franco's Spain, Fellers became a member of William Donovan's original OSS "planning group." Joining MacArthur's staff in 1943, Fellers ended up as the general's military secretary through the first year of the occupation of Japan. An advocate of strong air power, like Willoughby he called for a rollback of communism and disdained the CIA, which in Fellers' view harbored "a group of Marxist-Socialist pro-Communists." The Liaison's insider in the U.S. Congress was John Rousselot of California, a John Birch Society spokesman and a Christian Crusade board member.
  
• 3/22/1962 Hoover had lunch with JFK in the White House; no record of their conversation exists, but Hoover may have told Kennedy that he knew about Judith Campbell. By mid-summer his affair with her was over. According to the White House logs, the last telephone contact between the White House and Judith Campbell occurred a few hours after the luncheon.
  
• 3/22/1962 Vietnam: Operation "Sunrise" begun by Diem, in hopes of destroying the Viet Cong. Strategic Hamlet Program begins.
  
• 3/22/1962 Oswald wrote a letter to the Marines' B.G. Tompkins complaining about his downgraded discharge because of his defection; he stated that "I have never taken steps to renounce my US citizenship" and that the real story was known by the "United States Embassy, Moscow, or the US Department of State..." (CD 82)
  
• 3/23/1962 The day immediately following his luncheon with the President, at which Rosselli and Giancana were presumably discussed, Hoover sent a memorandum to Edwards stating: At the request of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, this matter was discussed with the CIA Director of Security on February 7, 1962, and we were advised that your agency would object to any prosecution which would necessitate the use of CIA personnel or CIA information. We were also informed that introduction of evidence concerning the CIA operation would be embarrassing to the Government. The Criminal Division has now requested that CIA specifically advise whether it would or would not object to the initiation of criminal prosecution against the subjects, Balletti, Maheu, and the individual known as J. W. Harrison for conspiracy to violate the "Wire Tapping Statute."
  
• 3/24/1962 JFK stays with Bing Crosby in Palm Springs for the weekend; Marilyn Monroe is also staying with Crosby, and tonight will be the only time, according to Monroe, that she ever slept with Kennedy.
  
• 3/24/1962 AP reported, in a story by Malcolm Browne, that US officials in Vietnam were trying to deceive the press about the supposedly non-combat role of US servicemen in that country.
  
• 3/26/1962 Supreme Court, in Baker v. Carr, ruled 6-2 (Harlan and Frankfurter dissenting) that the court had the power to order states to reapportion their congressional seats to meet population changes. Rural areas in many states had held a disproportionately large amount of power in state legislatures and congressional delegations, and conservatives fought to keep it that way. In Vermont, for example, one state legislator only represented 49 people while another served 33,000. In California, the 15,000 residents in three northern rural counties had equal weight in the state senate to the 7 million people in L.A. County. Baker v. Carr, which Warren felt was his most important ruling on the Court, affirmed the one man-one vote' principle.
  
• 3/26/1962 Castro gives a speech on "Bureaucracy and Sectarianism"; the transcript would be published by the Trotskyite Pioneer Press, and it was later found among Oswald's effects.
  
• 3/27/1962 A West German judge, Hermann Markl, resigns due to student protests triggered by a scene in the film Judgement at Nuremberg which exposed his Nazi past.
  
• 3/27/1962 The Saturday Evening Post included an interview with JFK: "In some circumstances we might have to take the initiative...Khrushchev must not be certain that, where its vital interests are threatened, the United States will never strike first."
  
• 3/27/1962 State Dept told the White House that the Soviets had already sent Cuba $100 million in arms.
  
• 3/27/1962 A high official of the State Department wrote to the INS and urged them to waive the sanctions against Marina Oswald. (WR 765-66)
  
• 3/29/1962 In Havana, 1179 Bay of Pigs prisoners go on trial before a five-man military tribunal for "crimes committed against the nation in connivance with a foreign power."
  
• 3/29/1962 Argentina: President Arturo Frondizi, a leftist intellectual and lawyer, is ousted by the military. His alliance with the Peronists led to his ouster by the army. 2/1961 he was visited by US officials Arthur Schlesinger and George McGovern. Frondizi had accepted a $150 million loan from Kennedy's Alliance for Progress at the time he was ousted. The Kennedy administration concluded that Frondizi was ousted because he had not gone far enough with reforms. He had tried to mend fences between Cuba and the US before the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1961 he held a secret meeting with Che Guevara to encourage him to get Castro and Kennedy talking to each other, but this failed. The military found out about the meeting, though, and this contributed to their decision to oust him. Dr. Jose Maria Guido, President of the Senate, was next in line when Frondizi was ousted and became acting president. The attempted coup by navy units 3/1963 was put down by Gen. Ongania. More military revolts followed.